Karakusevic Carson Architects were appointed at
resident ballot stage as masterplanners and Architects by Tower Hamlets
Community Housing to work with their Project Managers, Mansford Estate Steering
Group, local Residents and local Councilors to deliver their first phase –
Claredale Street – a mixed tenure housing scheme on a clearance site between
Keeling House and The Mansford Estate.

With
over 700 residences the Mansford Estate lies in the London Borough of Tower
Hamlets, it is comprised of a collection of 1960’s high rise towers and lower
rise 4/6 storey blocks with left over and ill-defined public/private spaces and misused walkways. Our clients were
aspirational, seeking design excellence for neighbourhood improvement, better
streetscape, environmental innovation and future proof housing design. Our
clients were firm in their belief that design excellence would ensure financial
viability through cross subsidy for the scheme, delivering mixed tenure more
successfully and helping to create a more vibrant mixed community. Claredale
Street, as one of the first phases of the regeneration programme was to be used
as an exemplar, to demonstrate to the wider community THCH’s intent to deliver
mixed, balanced, high quality housing and an improved neighbourhood.

The site was previously part of a Denys Lasdun scheme (including the 16
storey Keeling House) built in 1957. The previous 8 storey slab block of
Bradley House had left over space and ill-defined public/private relationships,
poor quality street scape and impermeability for pedestrians. Yet this
part of the Inner city London Estate was
immediately surrounded by the successful
vibrant Victorian/Edwardian neighbourhoods of Bethnal Green, Jesus Hospital
conservation area and Hackney Road, which offered opportunities to re-connect into successful
local street patterns, scale and material references .

Overall the scheme provides for 77 new homes of mixed tenure, 40 of
which are social rented family homes. These included several for larger families
and also new homes for residents over the age of 60 moving from larger Council
Homes. The design studies explored the viability of social mix, house type and
site density and looked at how these could work with the desire for more
public, shared and private space that the previous slab block configuration had
failed to provide.

The Claredale Street scheme response sought to humanize
the Estate and create a smaller more intimate mini neighbourhood.
Conceived as an urban courtyard with inhabited edges, it reinstates the grain
of the pre-existing Victorian terraces that characterise the wider area –
through height and robust materials. This provides continuity to the street
line while allowing variety through the introduction of a range of housing types,
public space, shared courtyards and private amenity space at the centre of the
scheme. The reinstatement of Teesdale Street with a new pedestrian friendly
link, and public space fronted by family houses and maisonettes frames the
landscaped courtyards and creates a permeability and transparency across the
site.

Affordable family housing at the heart of the
scheme is at a similar scale to neighbouring Victorian terraces, the massing of
the 6/7 storey private sale apartments were linked by a communal courtyard. The
robust detailing and materials selected also referenced the colours of adjacent
buildings with careful selection of quality brick, standing seam copper roofing
types, window and balcony openings referring to the Victorian proportions.

Designed in close collaboration
with the resident steering group, the design took into account a desire from
English Heritage to keep Keeling House by Denys Lasdun as a stand-alone
building. This was achieved through the placement of the apartment building at
the western edge of the site and low rise family housing and maisonettes
arranged around a courtyard, and a new pedestrianised street in-between the
taller buildings to the East and West.

The resulting scheme has the same level of
accommodation as the former building on the site but delivers a very different
neighbourhood in terms of tenure mix, housing type, increased and improved
public and private realm, provided more green space, opened up streets through
the site, provided for courtyards and gardens, met CfSH4 and an improved sense
of community for local residents.

Recognised for design excellence & described
by the GLA Planning Department as “One of the best examples of
estate regeneration”. The project has been exhibited and published
widely, as part of the RIBA exhibition ‘Evolving British Housing’ and many
other publications.